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From: rhh@research.att.com (Ron Hardin <9289-11216> 0112110)
Subject: Re: Does AI make philosophy obsolete?
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Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ
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Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 12:30:34 GMT
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John McCarthy writes:
>     The BDD is equivalent to the logical sentences you build it
>     with, so I don't see what's wrong about it.  It's exactly as
>     predetermined.
>
>Can you build a BDD with quantified sentences?  What about function
>symbols?  What about modal operators?  What about formalized contexts?
>What about nonmonotonic reasoning?

I don't know what nonmonotonic reasoning is, but have the feeling it
must wear the pants.  BDDs like quantification, enjoy it more than
anything.  There is even a call bdd_unify() that does God knows what.

You'd do the missionary problem by iterating BDDs.  Except for the
island case, they're all formal verification problems, and
can be written and solved directly.  Verify that the other bank
is not reached, and the error track is the solution.

This comes to enumerating every possibility.  BDDs do it
mechanically but efficiently, without a trace of reasoning.
